Beau Geste Press was an independent publisher run by Felipe Ehrenberg, Martha Hellion and David Mayor. [1] It was active from 1970 until 1976 at Langford Court South in Cullompton, Devon, where Hellion and Ehrenberg lived. [2]
Art historian David Mayor eventually joined the couple at Longford, when he became public-relations manager for the press. [3] British cartoonist Chris Welch and his partner Madeleine Gallard, founding members of the press, lived at Longford in 1970 and 1971. [1] Other artists involved included Terry Wright, Pat Wright, and Takako Saito. [1]
Beau Geste Press published art works, concept booklets, pamphlets, magazines, flyers and postcards. [2] The press aimed to function outside of the commercial art market, to critique the power of art institutions and to create projects in opposition to the consumerist and political mainstream. Their 1973-74 catalogue declared "Beau Geste Press is not a business. It's a way of life. We exist because you exist. Our activities serve as a link-up, stressing contact between Britain and Latin America as well as East European countries. We are political though not politicized. Our editions are limited because we print, bind and distribute ourselves." [4]
Although their books were often produced cheaply in small editions–"within the satisfying boundaries of an operation sponsored by no one," as their editorial manifesto reads–they worked with contributors from a wide and international network including Mexico, Chile, Japan, Iceland and Canada. [5]
Their printing techniques included mimeograph, offset lithography, and letterpress. [1]
In 1972 Beau Geste Press initiated a serial called Schmuck, [6] in which each issue featured artists from a specific region. [2] There were eight issues of the magazine, which covered Iceland, Hungary, Chezchoslovakia, France, Germany and Japan. Each issue was edited by an artist from the location. [5]
Also in 1972, Beau Geste Press published the catalogue to the FLUXshoe exhibition, a traveling show of artist multiples organized by David Mayor, Ken Friedman and Mike Weaver. [1]
Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus is known for experimental contributions to different artistic media and disciplines and for generating new art forms. These art forms include intermedia, a term coined by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins; conceptual art, first developed by Henry Flynt, an artist contentiously associated with Fluxus; and video art, first pioneered by Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell. Dutch gallerist and art critic Harry Ruhé describes Fluxus as "the most radical and experimental art movement of the sixties".
Terry Atkinson is an English artist.
Art & Language is an English conceptual artists' collaboration that has undergone many changes since it was created around 1967. The group was founded by artists who shared a common desire to combine intellectual ideas and concerns with the creation of art, and included many Americans.
Herbert Brenon was an Irish-born U.S. film director, actor and screenwriter during the era of silent films through 1940.
The Last Remake of Beau Geste is a 1977 American historical comedy film directed, co-written and starring Marty Feldman. It is a satire loosely based on the 1924 novel Beau Geste, a frequently-filmed story of brothers and their adventures in the French Foreign Legion. The humor is based heavily upon wordplay and absurdity. Feldman plays Digby Geste, the awkward and clumsy "identical twin" brother of Michael York's Beau, the dignified, aristocratic swashbuckler.
The Woman's Building was a non-profit arts and education center located in Los Angeles, California. The Woman's Building focused on feminist art and served as a venue for the women's movement and was spearheaded by artist Judy Chicago, graphic designer Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and art historian Arlene Raven. The center was open from 1973 until 1991. During its existence, the Los Angeles Times called the Woman's Building a "feminist mecca."
Terry Alan Fox was an American Conceptual artist known for his work in performance art, video, and sound. He was of the first generation conceptual artists and he was a central participant in the West Coast performance art, video and Conceptual Art movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Fox was active in San Francisco and in Europe, living in Europe in the latter portion of his life.
The Isidore H. Heller House is a house located at 5132 South Woodlawn Avenue in the Hyde Park community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The house was designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The design is credited as one of the turning points in Wright's shift to geometric, Prairie School architecture, which is defined by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in horizontal bands, and an integration with the landscape, which is meant to evoke native Prairie surroundings.
Spice Chess is an artist's multiple by the Japanese artist Takako Saito, while she was resident in the United States. Originally manufactured winter 1964–65, and offered for sale March 1965, the work is one of a famous series of disrupted chess sets referred to as Fluxchess or Flux Chess, made for George Maciunas' Fluxshop at his Canal Street loft, SoHo, New York City and later through his Fluxus Mail-Order Warehouse.
"Takako Saito engaged with Duchamp's practice but also with masculinist cold war metaphors by taking up chess as a subject of [her] art. Saito's fluxchess works... question the primacy of vision to chess, along with notions of perception and in aesthetic experience more generally.... Her "Smell Chess," "Sound Chess" and "Weight Chess" reworked the game of chess so that players would be forced to hone non-visual perception, such as the olfactory sense, tactility, and aurality, in order to follow chess rules." Claudia Mesch
Takako Saito is a Japanese artist closely associated with Fluxus, the international collective of avant-garde artists that was active primarily in the 1960s and 1970s. Saito contributed a number of performances and artworks to the movement, which continue to be exhibited in Fluxus exhibitions to the present day. She was also deeply involved in the production of Fluxus edition works during the height of their production, and worked closely with George Maciunas.
Thelma Golden is the Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, United States. Golden joined the Museum as Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs in 2000 before succeeding Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims, the Museum's former Director and President, in 2005. She is noted as one of the originators of the term Post-Blackness.
Carol Lorraine Sutton is a multidisciplinary artist born in Norfolk, Virginia, USA and now living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is a painter whose works on canvas and paper have been shown in 32 solo exhibits as well as being included in 94 group shows. Her work, which ranges from complete abstraction to the use of organic and architectural images, relates to the formalist ideas of Clement Greenberg and is noted for the use of color. Some of Sutton paintings have been related to ontology.
The illustration of manuscript books was well established in ancient times, and the tradition of the illuminated manuscript thrived in the West until the invention of printing. Other parts of the world had comparable traditions, such as the Persian miniature. Modern book illustration comes from the 15th-century woodcut illustrations that were fairly rapidly included in early printed books, and later block books. Other techniques such as engraving, etching, lithography and various kinds of colour printing were to expand the possibilities and were exploited by such masters as Daumier, Doré or Gavarni.
Clyst Hydon is a village and civil parish in the county of Devon, England. It was in the Cliston Hundred and has a church dedicated to St Andrew. The parish is surrounded, clockwise from the north, by the parishes of Cullompton, Plymtree, Payhembury, Talaton, Whimple, Clyst St Lawrence and Broad Clyst.
Nancy Buchanan is a Los Angeles-based artist best known for her work in installation, performance, and video art. She played a central role in the feminist art movement in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Her work has been exhibited widely and is collected by major museums including the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou.
Mavo was a radical Japanese art movement of the 1920s. Founded in 1923, Mavo was productive during the late Taishō period (1912–26). Mavo re-instituted the Japanese Association of Futurist Artists, the anarchistic artist group who displayed an outdoor exhibit in Ueno Park in Tokyo in protest of conservatism in the Japanese art world.
Martha Hellion is a visual artist, radical publisher, and freelance curator. Her formal studies were in Architecture and Museum Design; in later years she continued to specialize in experimental art in England and the Netherlands. From then on her praxis has been focused on editions of artists' books and other multidisciplinary projects.
Felipe Ehrenberg was a Mexican artist who worked in painting, drawing, printmaking and performance, among other mediums. He also published books and magazines.
Clive Robertson, is a Canadian performance and media artist, critic, curator, publisher and retired Queen's University art history professor. He is based in Kingston, Ontario.
Art-Language: The Journal of Conceptual Art (1969-1985) was a magazine published by the conceptual artists of Art & Language. Involving more than 20 artists in the United States, Europe, and Australia, and covering almost 20 years production, it is one of the most extensive artworks of conceptual art and is regarded as an important influence on both conceptual art and contemporary art.
I don't understand quite a good deal of what is said by Art-Language, but I admire the investigatory energies, the tireless spade-work, the full commitment to the reestablishment of a valid language by which to discuss art and the occasional humour in their writings. The chaos in their reasons fascinates me, but it is also irritating to be unequipped to evaluate their work. - Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object, Lucy R. Lippard, 1973.